Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c17.s2.10

c17.s2.10

¹ MASI., No. 1. pp. 14-15. In *IHQ*, 1929 (p. 601) Mr. Chanda points to the agreement of the Nānāghāṭ script with the Besnagar Inscription of the time of Antialkidas. But the exact date of Antialkidas is uncertain. He may have belonged to the latter half of the second century B. C. or the first half of the next century. Mr. R. D. Banerji, while disagreeing with the views of Mr. Chanda in regard to certain points, admits, after a detailed examination of certain epigraphs, that "the Nānāghāṭ inscriptions show the use of a very large number of Ksatrapa or early Kusana forms side by side with older ones" (*Mem. Asiat. Soc. Bengal*, Vol. XI, No. 3, p. 145). According to Rapson (*Andhra Coins*, lxxvii) the form of the *akshara* *'da'* found in the Nānāghāṭ record resembles that of a coin-legend which is assignable to the first or second century B. C. It is not suggested that either Banerji or Rapson placed the Nānāghāṭ record in the first century B.C. But some of the facts they have placed before us do not preclude the possibility of a date in the first century B. C. The theory that the record belongs to the second century B.C. rests in some measure on the assumption tacitly accepted by the older generation of scholars that Khāravela's thirteenth year corresponds to the year 165 of the time of the Maurya kings (Bühler, *Indian Palaeography*, 39; Rapson xvii).